Cast From The Herd: Memories of Matriarchal Malaysia
M. Bakri Musa
Excerpt # 5: Chairul Anwar–My Hero!
“Read it!” Mr. Noh commanded as he turned to the blackboard with Chairul Anwar’s immortal poem “Aku” which he had written earlier.
A soft monotonous murmur filled the air, the humming of Buddhist monks except that we were not in saffron robes and our heads unshaven. And there were girls amidst us!
“Put in some feeling!” as he swung his fist.
The humming grew but not by much, punctuated by nervous giggles from the girls. He cut us off, unable to bear our pathetic attempt. “Aku!” as he punched his left fist into his right palm, the smashing sound reverberating through the room. Good thing it was his palm and not my face. He looked at the board once in a while as if he was unsure of his lines. Of course he knew them by heart. That was just a display of false modesty on his part, to reassure us that he was after all not a language teacher.
When he finished reciting the whole poem, I felt an unaccustomed warm glow enveloping me. The hair on the back of my neck stiffened. I felt downright manly. I had never heard my language uttered in such a sure, assertive tone. It bordered on the arrogance, with defiance oozing all over, accentuated by the clenching of his lips and fists. His tone jarred the melodious sounds of those words.
He let his words sink in. Then, “Look at the poem,” as he pointed to the board.
What was there to see but lines that ended with words that rhymed?
“Is this your parents’ poetry?” he taunted us.
I was familiar with pantun (quatrains), gurindam (couplets), and seloka (rhythmic verses). They were recited at ceremonies and festivals, but this poem did not at all sound like any of those. Yet it had its own inner rhythm, powerful imageries, and stirring emotions, much more so than our melodious pantun. This certainly was not a poem you would recite to your lover on a moon-lit beach.
Chairil had penned it at the height of the horrendous Japanese Occupation when evil was everywhere, with young men herded onto trucks and trains to be sent to the war fronts or the infamous Death Railway in Burma, never to return. Noh went on to relate the poet’s utter contempt for his leaders who in their blind hatred for the colonialists had embraced the Japanese. Those native leaders continued doing so, with their followers in tow, long after the Japanese had proved to be even worse monstrous masters.
Chairil was angry at the Japanese of course, but he was even more contemptuous of those Malay leaders for betraying their people, and for them to blindly follow their leaders. Those folks were like kerbau (domestic water buffalo), Chairil sneered. Like the kerbau, those leaders were in turn being led by the ring through their noses to the slaughter house by the Japanese, with the masses following in tow.
“We should be like the seladang (wild buffalo) instead” Noh thundered, “wild, feared, and free to roam. No one would dare put a ring through its nose!”
I was now in rapt attention. After that absorbing but brief detour as a captivating storyteller he was back to being a teacher with his questions. He challenged us to ponder whether those defiant words could have been uttered by a palace hamba (slave, peasant) or the sultan.
My God! We were only a few minutes into his class and he was already peppering us with questions. I did not expect that, not from a substitute teacher of an unimportant subject in a honeymoon-year class. This fellow was determined to make full use of his time with us.
Thank goodness he answered himself. Those defiant words, he reminded us, could not possibly have been uttered much less written by a hamba. You would not expect peasants to be assertive or literate, so excuse them. The sultans however, were a different story. They should be leading their people away from those menacing trains and trucks. They should lead in the sabotage; one truck immobilized by a flat tire would spare the lives of dozens; a derailed train, thousands more. Instead, those sultans helped herd their subjects onto those trucks and trains bound for inevitable death.
“They were but kerbau leaders,” Noh thundered, “apologists and enablers for the Japanese. Left alone those villagers would do what ordinary self-respecting folks would; resist tyranny and fend for themselves.”
I was a village kid, familiar with kerbau. My grandfather had a few. Yet I missed his buffalo metaphor. Then I remembered the ease with which I could control my grandfather’s herd by simply holding on to the rope attached to the ring through the lead buffalo’s nose.
“The ring may be of gold and the line spun of silk,” Noh continued, “still, even a Japanese toddler could control the animal and through it the herd.”
You may not have a ring through your nose but if you follow a leader who is being led around by the ring through his nose, then it is the same as if that ring is through your nose.
Next: Excerpt # 6: Mandul Leaders
